12/15/10

Delivery Story...

5pm:

It’s time to push! Everything looks so well that they think within 15-30minutes we’ll know if we were gonna have a son or daughter! We’re SO beyond thrilled! They start getting everything ready…It’s Go Time!

5-6:30pm-ish:

I push, and push and push! Jason was AMAZING! He blew me away by being the best coach I could have ever needed or dreamed of! Seriously he was a total rock star! He had decided he wasn’t going to look South during the whole thing but the nurse kept saying, “look there’s your baby’s head! Look!!” So to avoid feeling like the worst dad of all time he looked…and regretted it J I asked later if he say the head to which he exclaimed, “NO!” Jack’s head just kept coming out a little bit and then going back in. So, they decided to let gravity try and help and give me a short break by giving me 20 minutes, during which, my epidural wore off. I so didn’t care that it was gone. I was SO highly motivated to get to meet this baby I didn’t care! Bring on the pain, I thought, maybe this is the motivation I need!

6:30-8pm:

My nurse comes back and I push some more. The old doc comes in with a cup of coffee, sits in the rocking chair at the end of my bed and stare at my efforts. WEIRD!

I start to get a fever because my water had broken so long before. So, they start me on an antibiotic to avoid infection for me and the baby. My doctor finally said he thought it was time to try the vacuum to assist in the delivery. I remembered at my childbirth class the nurse saying if the doctor suggests this method it’s a last resort and we should listen to the doctor

AND I was so ready to meet this baby I was all about it! My hospital is a teaching hospital so as soon as we agree to the vacuum in come 8 or so additional residents and nurses to help and observe. He tells me I get 3 contraction or 9 or so pushes to try this with the vacuum. So it begins! I’m ready to meet the baby, find out the gender and impress my new audience. Contraction one…nothing. Contraction two…nothing. Contraction three…vacuum flies off the baby making a loud pop, the docs arm flies back and blood splatters on my new audience. Then

this experience started to feel like a sad scary movie!

They tell me we need to go to surgery and have this baby via c-section. I’m defeated! ALL that hard work, ALL that pushing, ALL that effort and I couldn’t do it. I’d be lying if I told you I still don’t feel any disappointment about not delivering the way I thought I would.

And remember how I was fine about my epidural being gone….I wasn’t anymore! I was in pain physically and now emotionally and I wanted to feel nothing. But, the anesthesiologist was busy with another patient and I had to wait for about 30 minutes (it may have been only 10 I’m not sure but it felt like an eternity). He finally came in to administer a spinal block but for whatever reason I still had feeling on my right side not totally but still enough.

8:30pm:

I get wheeled into the operating room and Jason joins me shortly after. I can feel too much and forget to breath through the pain. Luckily the sweet anesthesiologist reminds me I’m providing oxygen to my baby so I breath. I can literally feel the doctor climb on the operating table to push the baby into the right position. They quickly pull out our baby, hang him over the curtain and exclaim, IT’S A BOY! I look at Jason and say, “did they say it’s a boy? Did we get our boy?’

We both cry, hold hands tightly and say over and over, “we have our Jack”! They bring Jack by my bed for maybe 45 seconds to look at him and then quickly take him out of the operating room and I insist Jason go with him.

Little did I know that would be the only time I would see him that day.

9-11pm:

I’m in recovery completely drugged on morphine and the high of having my precious baby.Jason comes in to see me and looks SO sad! When I asked him why he says it was hard to watch me go though all that and not even get to hold our baby.

What he wasn’t telling me then was what happened to our sweet Jack.

When the vacuum popped off it left a pretty deep laceration on his head and since he was in the birth canal so long he had a bit of a cone head. So when Jason went back to the NICU with him his head looked like Jell-o. He said Jack looked like he’d been beaten up.

I’m so drugged I’m un-phased by not seeing Jack and drift off into a deep sleep.

5:30am:

I wake up crying and feeling desperate to hold my boy. We call the nurse, she gets me sitting up (not a small effort after surgery) and wheeled down to meet my precious Jackson Danger Burgett! I was immediately in love and dying to get him out of the NICU as fast as I could!

November 7:

It’s time for me to leave the hospital…but not Jack, he needs to stay in the NICU for a few more days. Leaving the hospital without a baby was a new kind of pain to me. My heart has felt broken before…this felt different, like part of my heart was ripped out and staying at that hospital. It felt like I was still pregnant almost cause I still didn’t have a baby to take home. So I stood in the lobby of the hospital waiting for Jason to pull around the car and cried. The valet guy came in and asked if I needed a cab!?!? How sad would that have been?

Side note-I had no idea this would happen. I didn’t swell AT ALL during my pregnancy but after I had Jack my feet were SO swollen I thought I needed medical attention. YUCK!

November 10:

We bring Jack home!

Jack stayed in the NICU for 6 days. Because of the fever I had coupled with the laceration he needed to be monitored and given an antibiotic. Praise the Lord NO permanent damage was obtained and he’s doing great! This was the best day ever! Our family was finally complete!

Overall this was not what I expected! I had a totally normal pregnancy, my labor was textbook (everyone kept saying) and then BAM it was the exact opposite of what I envisioned. I SO didn’t pack correctly for a c-section stay, didn’t mentally prepare for what went on. Recovering from 3 hours of pushing + surgery= NO FUN AT ALL! I still feel some disappointment with the way it went down but that feeling quickly goes away once I look at my perfect little boy’s eyes! God is Good!

6 comments:

That's why I always get so nervous at "push time" because that's when things go wrong! BUT the bottom line is you have your precious baby boy and he is healthy and whole and his head is perfectly shaped :-)I love you my dearest and am so proud of you!!

wow, I feel like I just read my exact story minus the vacuum part! From the perfect labor, to the never ending pushing, to the epidural wearing off, to the emergency c-section, to the not seeing my baby for 16 hrs, to the NICU & 6 days of antibiotics and staying at the hosptial.... sheesh, I SO feel for you. Our next babies WILL come out perfectly-- I believe it!

This is exactly how I feel about my labor with Piper. I'm praying for a wonderful labor this time with Charlie. NO C-SECTION!!!! It is soo disappointing. I'm so glad that you both are alright and Jack is GORGEOUS!! Congrats my sweet friend!!

I can't believe I haven't commented on your birth story till now! What a daunting experience at the end and what a brave mommy you were/are! I'm am so glad in the end everything turned out okay. I've heard of this type of thing happening, but it's so very rare and has to do with the release valve on the vacuum not working properly (but I'm sure you know that now). You poor thing, all that swelling, did they tell you it was from your IV fluids, cuz that's what it was from. Mabrie - you're a hero in my book - seriously way to labor like a champ!